Troubled Waters (27 page)

“You really ought to leave before all this gets started,” Father Jerry said.

Ron faced the priest. “I didn't marry Jan so I could let her carry the weight for the sanctuary movement. I did it so I could be there for her. You said the words yourself—‘for better or for worse.' That means I don't run away the minute it looks like the worst is coming.”

“There's nothing you can do here,” the priest said. “I'm sorry to put it that bluntly, but it's the truth. We have everything under control.”

Ron's face held a stubborn resolve his sister would have recognized. “Maybe so, but I'm staying.”

The priest, dressed in his Roman collar for the wedding, reached up and unbuttoned it from the back. He then released the top buttons of his black shirt and slid it over his shoulders.

“Ron, you married Jan so you could protect her. But she has a need to protect you as well. That's what marriage is about, and that's why I agreed to perform the ceremony even though you're not Catholic.”

He stood up and walked over to the closet at the back of the room. He hung the black garment on a hanger and walked over to a dresser, from which he removed a bright green golf shirt. “So, much as I admire your desire to be here for Jan, I also have to respect her desire to protect you. She wants you to go before we start moving Joaquín.” The priest's head disappeared inside the green shirt.

“Look,” Ron replied, “it's bad enough I'm not part of the plan. The most I can do is sit here and wait until it's over and Jan comes back. So please, Father, let me do that much.”

“What if Koeppler charges you as an accessory?”

Ron lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “How can he? All I am is a man who came to a church to get married and stayed for a glass of wine afterwards. I just want to be here when Jan gets back. I want to share as much of her life as I can, and this is part of her life. I don't want her facing this alone.”

The priest walked over and placed his hand on Ron's shoulder. He gave a nod and said, “Okay. I promised her I'd do what I could to make you leave, and I've done that. Between you and me, I think you're doing the right thing. Jan's been out there on the edge alone for too long. She needs to learn to lean on someone else for a change.”

His long face broke into a warm smile. “I'm just glad she found you. I think you two are going to be one of the best marriages I've ever seen. Jan's a passionate woman who needs a strong purpose in life, and you can help her focus that. I don't mean just on your disability, don't get me wrong, although strangely enough, I think Jan's one of the few women in this world who could handle being married to a man as profoundly disabled as you are. She's got a lot of love and a lot of strength—and so do you.”

Ron gave the priest a grateful smile. Jan stepped out of the spare bedroom dressed in khaki shorts and a yellow T-shirt. She'd pulled her hair back in a ponytail held in place by a perky yellow ribbon. If you didn't concentrate on the lines in her face, the scars on her thin arms, she looked about fifteen.

“‘Chantilly Lace,'” Ron sang in a mock-bass, “‘and a purty face. And a ponytail, hangin' down. Wigglin' walk, gigglin' talk, makes the world go round.'”

Father Jerry took the chorus, holding his hand to his mouth as if singing into a microphone: “‘There ain't nothin' in the world like a big-eyed girl, makes me spend my money, makes me talk real funny.'”

Both men trailed off into laughter as they realized they'd come to the end of their musical knowledge. Jan put her hands on her hips and said, “It's a good thing Dana isn't here. That must be the most sexist song ever recorded.”

She walked toward the wheelchair, ran her hands along Ron's shoulders and said into his ear, “‘Oh, baby, that's what I like.'” She stretched the words out in the Big Bopper's provocative tone and added, “Just hold that thought, hon. I'll be back from this little jaunt before you know it.” Her face crinkled into the bad-girl grin he liked so much. “And then it's honeymoon city.” She leaned down for a last kiss and then dashed out the door, but not before Ron saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes.

She was meeting Dana behind the van Wormer farm. She drove along the dirt roads and made the proper turns, but all she could think about was coming back to Ron when it was all over.

What could they do in bed? That was the question anybody who saw this marriage would ask. The truth was, she didn't know for certain. There would be kissing, lots and lots of kissing, and she could guide his hands to where her body would appreciate them most. But there was no feeling in his lower body. No way he could react as a man in the physical sense. Still, she looked forward to lying in a double bed with him, caressing and being caressed.

Sex wasn't everything. For a woman who'd been used and who'd let herself be used for more years than she cared to remember, sex wasn't even on the board. Ron could love, and love was what she needed, in every single cell of her body.

She parked next to the trailers and opened the door to the nearest one. Dana and a man wearing a baseball cap were inside; they greeted her with curt nods.

Walt Koeppler handed the binoculars to his second-in-command. “There he is.” He pointed to the straw-hatted man in the bright yellow shirt who was emerging from the nearest trailer.

The man was tall and wiry, his long, tanned feet clad in huaraches. The only part of his face that was visible beneath the straw cowboy hat was the jet-black mustache. A cigar, undoubtedly a prime Havana import, protruded from his lips.

“Pretty cocky,” the other INS man said. “Anybody who's ever seen a
Newsweek
would recognize him.”

He turned back to his boss. “And this is the guy they think they can get out of the country without anyone noticing?”

“They're desperate,” Walt replied. “They can't leave him here either. They know we're inspecting all the farms around here that use migrants.” He saw no reason to inform his associate that they were staking out the van Wormer place based on inside information.

“So why don't we bust them now?”

“Because I want the boat. We go down now and we get Baltasar and Sobel. Big deal. I want them all, and I want that boat. So we wait until they reach their destination. We follow them and when we have a full house, we round them up.”

Dana Sobel drove to the rear of the van Wormer farm and pulled up next to the trailer. The straw-hatted man opened the door and got in. She drove; he sat in the passenger's seat. They sped out of the trailer area toward the highway.

Walt and his companion stepped into their car and followed from a discreet distance. One thing about the long, straight farm roads, you could stay far behind and still see your quarry. Of course the bad part was, your quarry could see you in the rearview. But since Sobel knew he'd be there, he didn't anticipate any problem.

The second man to emerge from the trailer wore a Toledo University Rockets T-shirt, his tanned arms sticking out of the sleeves. His cutoff jeans were ragged and his sockless feet were thrust into ancient boat shoes. A New York Mets cap shielded his face and hid his unruly black hair, which was pulled back into a ponytail like the girl's.

From a distance, he looked just like Joel Alan Rapaport.

But the voice that emerged from the half-hidden face spoke with a Spanish accent.

“Should we go now?”

Jan looked at her watch. Dana had been gone for ten minutes. Time enough to have lured Walt Koeppler far away from the van Wormer farm.

She nodded. She and Joaquín Baltasar walked slowly toward Rap's car. He opened the door and slid into the driver's seat, while Jan walked around to the other side.

As he started the engine, Joaquín rubbed his upper lip. “I shall have a requiem mass for my mustache. It has been with me since I was sixteen. But I suppose it was necessary to remove it.”

Dale Krepke lowered his binoculars. What incredible luck! Not only was the INS out of his hair, following Sobel and Che Guevara, but Rapaport was alone with Gebhardt.

He shook his head. Busted for drugs more than once, supposedly in a recovery program, but here she was sitting next to her favorite dealer. It went to show what he knew already: There was no such thing as an ex-junkie.

He stepped behind the wheel of his Jeep and kept a discreet distance as he followed the vintage Mustang. Fire-engine red. Krepke shook his head; that just showed the kind of balls Rapaport had, driving around the countryside in a car that screamed “drug dealer on the loose.”

What do you say to a national hero? Jan sat in the passenger's seat of Rap's beloved Mustang and wondered whether her companion would prefer conversation or silence. Did he want to talk about the newspaper articles he'd written about the Nicaraguan
contra
activity in Honduras?

Finally she could stand the silence no longer. “I read the article about you in
Newsweek
,” she said. Her fingers clutched the armrest so tightly they ached. “In fact,” she went on, trying for a conversational tone, “a friend of mine wrote it. Ted Havlicek.”

Her companion's face broke into a wide smile. “
Sí
,” he said, nodding his head. “
Sí, Teodoro es mi amigo
.”

That was about the extent of Jan's Spanish.
Ted is my friend
. Conversation languished. She focused on the plan.

They were supposed to meet another car out on Pickle Road, near the radio station. Joaquín would step into that car and be whisked away toward the New York-Canada border, a new approach they all hoped the INS wouldn't be prepared for. Jan would drive the Mustang back to Our Lady of Guadalupe and start her new life with Ron, her work for the sanctuary movement finished at last.

She took the turn that would lead them toward the radio station. She smiled and then frowned as she remembered the summer of '69 and the Spanish-language program they'd broadcast for the migrants. The smile was for their innocence; the frown was for the time Kenny took the wrong tape and “Mellow Yellow” went out over the airwaves instead of pro-union speeches.

Rap had been furious, called her cousin a stupid little fuck who played practical jokes with people's lives. But if there was one thing she knew about her long-dead cousin, it was that there wasn't a practical-joking bone in his body. He'd been a totally serious kid, and he'd wanted more than anything to be a real part of their group. He would never have sabotaged the broadcast on purpose.

So someone had slipped him the wrong tape. But who, and when?

Why was easy. Why was so that Kenny would get a reputation for screwing up, a reputation that would come in handy when the parathion canister proved to be real instead of fake.

The corn was shoulder-high. Ready to eat. She'd stop at a farm stand on the way back from the rendezvous and buy a dozen ears for dinner. Home-grown tomatoes, too, hand-harvested, not picked by machine for the ketchup factory.

Her mouth watered, but her mind clicked along, remembering the tape screwup in vivid detail. Whose job had it been to make the tape in the first place?

Rap's, of course. He was the electronics wizard, the one who knew what dials to turn for the best sound. Abe Murillo made the tapes at the White House, on Rap's equipment, since the station didn't want its facilities used directly for the migrant union movement.

So who was to say Rap didn't intentionally bury the real Murillo tape and substitute the Donovan song?

Or maybe Dana, who practically lived in Rap's one-room lair in the White House. She'd been in the forefront of the “lynch Kenny” movement at the time.

Then Ritamae's voice, strong and sure, sounded in her head:
How long the boy been dead? This shit is not where you need to be at right now
.

The other car was a plain white van. It sat in a roadside picnic area, as if its occupants were about to spread a checkered cloth and enjoy Grandma's cold fried chicken and Aunt Susie's potato salad. But the men in the car didn't look like picnickers.

They didn't look like sanctuary movement people either. They were bulky and big and menacing. They stepped out of the van and stepped over to the Mustang as if about to make an arrest.

Jan's heart stopped. Walt? Had their elaborate deception been a complete bust? Had Walt Koeppler seen at once that the man in the Rockets T-shirt was Joaquín, not Rap?

She was so panicked that she failed to notice the plain tan sedan sliding into the alfalfa field next to the picnic area. She also failed to notice Dale Krepke stepping out of his car and heading toward the rendezvous.

The two men stepped over to the car. Joaquín got out and said, “Is all set? Go to Canada?” He handed a small pack to the man, who took it and tossed it into the back of the car.

The big man in the plaid sport shirt nodded. “Yeah, yeah. All set. Just get in the car, okay?”

Joaquín stepped toward the white van. Krepke ran up, gun drawn, and yelled, “Stop. You're under arrest. I'm a federal officer.”

“So are we,” the taller of the two men replied. “Put down that gun.”

Joaquín reached over and pulled the gun from the waistband of the man in the plaid shirt. He pointed it directly at Dale Krepke and pulled the trigger. The young DEA man grabbed his stomach and fell to the ground, moaning.

Jan stood transfixed. It was just like Miguel. A horrible replay of the day she'd watched Miguel bleed to death in the dust. But who was this guy, and why was he here? And who were the big guys in the white van? They weren't the people she expected to meet, but who—

Joaquín strode toward the dying man, who sobbed and prayed as he clutched his bleeding stomach. He lowered the gun to the man's temple, then fired off two more rounds. The head disappeared, replaced by a huge puddle of blood. The moans ceased.

“You killed him,” Jan whispered. She was shaking badly and she wasn't sure whether the moisture on her legs was sweat or urine.